A good, meaty James Bowman piece from the New Atlantis that begins with a new production of Whose LIfe is it Anyway? in London, starring Kim Cattrall (of Sex in the City) and moves in all sorts of interesting directions.
American popular culture in general and Hollywood in particular is naturally libertarian in its sympathies, but it has a particular interest in keeping these connections out of sight of its audience, which includes a big majority of religious believers. There is at the very heart of it, therefore, a form of dishonesty. This involves an attempt to pretend that property, in which Americans also tend to be strong believers, is the inevitable metaphor for their stake in their own lives, and that there is no question of any liens upon such property held by the Almighty. Practically, this deception takes a slightly different form in each of the three cases. With respect to sexual behavior, morality is transformed into "repression," a useful idea derived from vulgar Freudianism. With respect to abortion, morality is replaced by "choice" — a metaphor from the market economy (also popular in America) and exploited for all it is worth by the advocates of legal abortion — even though the actual choice on screen is often to have the baby. And when it comes to euthanasia or assisted suicide, morality’s substitute is "compassion" — presumed to be a moral quality itself which trumps all others.
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